IMPERIAL CONFERENCE

Southland Times, Issue 19295, 5 August 1921, Page 5

IMPERIAL CONFERENCE

LOYALTY TO THE ALLIES. MR MASSEY’S ATTITUDE COMMENDED. (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Special to Press Association.) LONDON, August 3. The National Review, referring to the opening speeches at the Imperial Conference, says editorially under the heading, “Mr Massey to the Rescue”: “We are all grateful to Mr Massey for following General Smuts and saying a word in season. We feel that his protest on behalf of loyalty and good faith to the Allies will appeal to all that is best in the overseas dominions just as it is appreciated in the Old World.” To General Smuts’s demand that Britain should wash her hands of Europe and avoid any partisan attitude in its concerns, necessarily rejecting all alliances, Mr Massey replied that he could not join in General Smuts’s opinion that we should do without alliances. They must stand by their treaties even if for the time being they did not seem of much advantage, their reputation for fair and honest dealing was one of their best assets and must be maintained at all costs. If Britain had been compelled to stand alone in the late war could she have been successful. With all the confidence he had in her might, power and patriotism, he doubted it.